Yesterday, the Chicago Sun-Times (Mike Kiley, “Hendry choosing words carefully,” 1/18/2004) quoted Jim Hendry as saying, “We are going to give Ryan Dempster an opportunity to do [be the closer] in spring training, if nothing else changes. LaTroy Hawkins did a terrific job in the eighth last year and didn’t have quite as much luck in the ninth. In fairness to him, with Joe Borowski and Kyle Farnsworth being hurt, Hawk was put in a tough situation where he had to be overworked to a degree.”
In tomorrow’s Chicago Tribune (Dave Van Dyck, “Baker: Priority No. 1 is Sosa talk,” 1/20/2004), however, Dusty Baker is quoted as saying, “Everybody talks about Dempster, but we don’t know if he can do it; he never has done it. Joe Borowski might be healthy, we don’t know yet. And LaTroy Hawkins might be more experienced than last year. He certainly has the stuff. . . LaTroy will be better if he knows the league himself.”
“Everybody” is talking about Dempster as the closer because that’s what Baker’s boss is talking about. Baker and Hendry aren’t always on the same page, though, and this may be another example. On this issue, I think Baker will win out.
The AP reports that the Cubs hired Chris Speier to be the new 3B coach. Speier played for the Cubs in 1985 and 1986, near the end of his playing career.
After an injury-riddled seasons, the Cubs fired head athletic trainer Dave Groeschner and assistant trainer Sandy Krum. Daily Herald columnist Barry Rozner had this to say about the firings:
The blame game
Never mind the curse of the goat. If you’re a Cubs trainer, it’s the curse of the scapegoat.
It has become something of a tradition at Wrigley Field to blame the trainers when things go bad, so Wednesday’s news that the Cubs had done it again was hardly surprising.
Besides, when you’ve already blamed the announcers, the media in general, the umpires, the coaches and worldwide conspiracies, why not blame the trainers?
Worth noting
GM Jim Hendry looked less than managerial during the Sammy Sosa and Steve Stone fiascos, but in the last week he has regained some control and whacked two Dusty Baker pigeons (a trainer and a third-base coach). Is this the start of something between Hendry and Baker?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the tenor of the second item inconsistent with the first? Bad job Cubs in placing blame where it doesn’t belong; good job Hendry for starting to act like a GM and taking control of the team.
In any event, if there are problems between Hendry and Baker in terms of control of the team, this isn’t the first evidence of those problems (see here, here, and here, all from the 2003 season).
It was surprising, given that Dave Groeschner was in his first season as the Cubs trainer. The Cubs injuries can hardly be laid at Groeschner’s feet on the whole, though there are certainly reasons beyond them that the Cubs may have. The Cubs were only slightly above average in days lost to the DL. Still, one year is too short a time frame to make any judgment about Groeschner’s programs.
UPDATE (10/16/2004 1:05am):The Big Red C thinks it a goodthing that Hendry appears to be taking control.
The AP reports that Wendell Kim is out as third base coach for the Cubs. He’s not even being given the first base coach’s job, as previously rumored. Instead, Gary Matthews is taking over first base, with Gene Clines becoming the hitting coach. All other coaches—pitching coach Larry Rothschild, bench coach Dick Pole, and bullpen coach Juan Lopez—will be back next year. Iowa Cubs coach Mike Quade will be considered for the third base coach’s job, along with other unnamed candidates.
Could it happen? Could Wendell Kim finally be replaced as third base coach? Northside Lounge has the details on a possible scenario. But there’s been so much talkbefore . . . .
In what is becoming a recurring theme, the Cubs’ offense again failed today. Despite the verified return of the 2003 Mark Prior, who went 9 innings, gave up just 1 run on 3 hits and 1 walk, and had 16 strikeouts, the Cubs lost 2-1 to the Reds in 12 innings today.
The bottom of the 12th was particularly bungled.
With Kyle Farnsworth set to lead off, followed by the top of the order, Dusty Baker had the following pinch-hitting options: Jose Macias, Mike DiFelice, Calvin Murray, Jason Dubois, Ben Grieve, and Neifi Perez. Needing a run to stay in the game, the logical choice is to go with the guy with the best chance of getting on base. As Alex Ciepley noted in the comments section of this post at The Cub Reporter, that would be Ben Grieve, who has a lifetime OBP% of .366 and a 2004 OBP% of .360.
But Baker likes speed leading off innings. So he chose Macias, he of the lifetime .300 OBP% and .286 2004 OBP%.
Baker had already bypassed Grieve once. In the top of the 10th, he chose Tom Goodwin to pinch-hit to leadoff the inning. Lifetime: .332; 2004: .257. Goodwin struck out.
But Baker had to go with the speed. Nevermind that the rules of baseball allow you to pinch-run for a player after they reach base.
In any case, Macias singled to right, so the decision worked. Except that using Macias (and Goodwin earlier) took away another scenario: the possibility of tying the game with one swing. Grieve has 118 career home runs. Macias has 25.
Macias’s single brought up Corey Patterson, who has been swinging through pitches for a month now. So the decision to play for the tie with Patterson is defensible. Normally, I would prefer allowing a player with some pop to win the game with a homer, or at least drive the runner in with a double into the gap (after all, we’re insisting on leading off the inning with speedy players who have a greater chance to score from first). But, again, Patterson is worse right now than what his season averages tell us.
But Patterson fails to get the bunt down, and then strikes out.
OK, we’re still fine. Garciaparra–a doubles machine–and Ramirez are coming up.
But then Garciaparra tries to sacrifice, too. Against Juan Padilla. Padilla came into the game having allowed 21 earned runs in 22.2 innings this year. Scratch and crawl against Randy Johnson, not Juan Padilla.
Garciaparra does get the bunt down, but that leaves the Cubs with just one more out. Ramirez walked, and Moises Alou flew out to end the game. Let’s hope it didn’t end the season.
There’s nothing to be surprised about, but here’s Dusty Baker ruminating about why the Cubs haven’t taken many bases on balls yet this spring, as quoted by MLB.com:
“No. 1, I’ve let most guys hit 3-0 (in the count). That’s one reason. . . . I think walks are overrated unless you can run. If you get a walk and put the pitcher in a stretch, that helps, but the guy who walks and can’t run, most of the time he’s clogging up the bases for somebody who can run.”
Are singles then overrated unless you can run?
More Baker:
“Who have been the champions the last seven, eight years? Have you ever heard the Yankees talk about on-base percentage and walks? . . . Walks help. They do help. But you aren’t going to walk across the plate, you’re going to hit across the plate. That’s the school I come from.”
Mr. Baker, meet Google, which turns up this AP article from 2002, which quotes Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman as saying: “It’s just practical. If you want to score runs, you need to get guys on base. The best way to measure that is on-base percentage, because batting average can be very deceiving.”
There’s also this small fact: Over the last eight years, the Yankees have finished 3rd, 2nd, 1st, 2nd, 5th, 6th, 1st, and 2nd in OBP% in the American League.
It’s one thing to say that’s not the school you came from. It’s another to say that’s not the school anyone else came from either.
And finally:
“Everybody can’t hit with two strikes, everybody can’t walk,” Baker said. “You’re taking away some of the aggressiveness of a kid if you’re telling him to go up there and try to work for a walk. . . . It’s like when I see kids in Little League and they make the small kids go up there and try to get a walk. That’s not any fun. . . . Do you ever see the top 10 walking (rankings)? You see top 10 batting average. A lot of those top 10 do walk, but the name of the game is to hit.”
The Cubs have a manager who doesn’t understand the correlation between strike zone judgement and batting average. It’s as if he never coached Barry Bonds.
Reading this, it’s amazing Mark Bellhorn lasted even as long as he did.
In the Cubs roundtable I said Dusty Baker both inspired confidence and inspired dread. I forgot to mention that there are times when “dread” is too insufficient a word.
In yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, Paul Sullivan wrote, “In one 24-hour stretch, Juan Cruz went from potential fifth starter to potential middle reliever to potential minor-leaguer now that Greg Maddux is on board. Cruz bounced between the Cubs and Triple-A Iowa last year and could have a repeat this season.” One problem: Cruz, having been on the 40-man roster for three seasons, is out of options. (See Rob Neyer’s transactions primer.) Cruz is either getting traded, or he’s the long reliever.
Sullivan also has this curious quote from Dusty Baker: “I’ve talked to Juan. But I planned on talking to him. Juan wasn’t a lock for that fifth spot anyway. There are very few locks on this team. Juan is fighting for a position.”
UPDATE (2/23/2004 9:25am): As noted in the comments section, I was completely wrong about Cruz being out of options. Because he was never sent down in 2002, he has another option year remaining.
The Big Red C analyzes Dusty Baker’s starting pitchers v. bullpen usage patterns over the last six seasons. It appears the key factor is the quality of his starters, as opposed to the quality of his bullpen. If his starters are good, he’ll keep them out there, no matter the quality of his bullpen. The Cubs attempted to upgrade their bullpen again this offseason, and appear to have done a good job. As The Big Red C notes, a better bullpen should lower the workload of the starters. With Baker, though, that might not be the case.
Now that we’ve had some time to recover, this article by Rany Jazayerli from Baseball Prospectus’s free archives contrasting Dusty Baker’s and Jack McKeon’s performances is well worth reading.
I think Joe Sheehan makes a good point about last night’s game in his column today (sub. req’d):
Baker’s influence on the outcome was felt more directly in the eighth inning when, with an example of what to do right in front of him, he failed to take notice. Rather than bring in his best available right-handed reliever, Joe Borowski, in a tie game, Baker rode Dave Veres and his control problems to a loss. Veres walked Vinny Castilla after having him down 0-2–I understand the Hall of Fame asked for the ball–and then hung a 1-2 splitter to DeRosa that was just crushed into the left-center gap.
Bobby Cox, on the other hand, “who has exactly one good reliever, brought that reliever in in the eighth inning with the game on the line. . . . All Baker had to do was follow Cox’s lead; he didn’t, leaving his fifth-best reliever in to lose what was a very winnable game.”
Player IP H BB K ERA SNPct
Cruz 24 21 7 23 3.00 .636
Estes 142.2 177 79 98 6.06 .313
Tough choice.
Baseball Prospectus’s Dayn Perry named Estes (subscription req’d) to his All-Disappointment Team on Thursday. As much as we could have expected Estes to be bad this year, there was little reason to believe he would be this bad. It has been clear that he has been this bad for awhile now, though. It’s nice to see Baker finally take the ball away from him.
On another note, updating the strikeout record quest, with 15 games remaining, Cubs pitchers need 75 more K’s to break the all-time record of 1344, set by the 2001 Cubs.
The Daily Herald’s Bruce Miles on how wisely (and unwisely) the Cubs have spent their $80 million. Part of the “bad money,” of course, is Shawn Estes. The Cub Reporter puts Dusty Baker’s continued use of Estes in perspective – somebody pitching this poorly has just never continued to pitch for a contending team before. And Scott and Dennis at Northside Lounge examine Baker’s continued defense of Estes as someone who’s just been unlucky.
There’s one other thing I wanted to note from Miles’s article:
For now, we’re going to cut breaks to reliever Mike Remlinger ($2.63 million as part of a three-year, $10 million contract) and catcher Damian Miller ($2.7 million).
Remlinger hasn’t been himself, but he may yet turn it around. There’s no reason to believe Remlinger has been pitching in pain, but who knows what the Cubs will tell us after the season is over?
Did anyone else notice during Remlinger’s two inning stint in today’s game – in which he didn’t allow a run and continued to strike people out – that WGN was registering his fastball between 84-86, 5-6 MPH below what he normally throws? There’s no reason to think the gun was inaccurate; it appeared accurate for all the other pitchers. That’s a pretty big dropoff in velocity. As noted, though, it did not seem to affect Remlinger’s performance.
The Tribune’s headline in its recap of Thursday night’s 3-2 loss to the Cardinals is “Cub pen fails again”. The headline, and Paul Sullivan’s recap, both ignore that the offense failed for the second game in a row, too.
AS IF WE NEEDED MORE EVIDENCE OF BAKER’S PREFERENCE FOR VETERANS: A separate Tribune article says that Baker has demoted Kyle Farnsworth to 6th and 7th inning duty. Antonio Alfonseca and Mike Remlinger will pitch the 8th inning now. Here’s Baker’s predictable reasoning:
“He’s young, he still has a lot to learn,” Cubs manager Dusty Baker said. “He never has been in this pressure cooker before. It’s different. You can say, ‘Hey, man, I know I can do this. I know I can handle this.’ But until you’re there. … He’ll be better because of this. I may have to reconsider things in the bullpen.
. . . .
Alfonseca came into Thursday’s game having allowed seven runs in 1 2/3 innings in his last two outings, but Baker said he has experience in pressure situations.
As I noted earlier, Farnsworth has been struggling, so this move could work out. But Alfonseca has been struggling all year. Remlinger has pitched better post-All-Star Break, but giving up game winning home runs to the Kerry Robinsons of the world isn’t exactly shutting the door. In short, the entire bullpen just needs to pitch better. Except Joe Borowski and Mark Guthrie, who are doing just fine. So why isn’t Guthrie a candidate to be the top setup man? I’m sure if you asked him, he’d say he could pitch to more than one batter. And he’s a veteran.
Baker can’t expect us to read the above comments and ever take seriously again any assertions he makes (like he was making in spring training) that he doesn’t have a severe preference for veteran players.
And it’s as if Baker didn’t even watch last year’s World Series, despite managing in it. Two rookie relief pitchers – Francisco Rodriguez and Brendan Donnelly – threw 16.1 innings against Baker’s Giants in that series, allowing just 2 earned runs. To top it all off, a rookie – John Lackey – was the winning starting pitcher in Game 7.
But young players can’t handle the pressure. Alfonseca, though, he’s been there. He can handle it. What’s that you say? Alfonseca was a rookie when he pitched in the 1997 World Series? Well who woulda thunk.
The Tribune’s headline in its recap of Thursday night’s